not good black in future sight? first pick ichor slick over the ghostfire- 2 deepcavern imps- death rattle- STRONGHOLD RATS-- and mass of ghouls is not that bad.
I hope I'm not starting to get a reputation for giving harsh critiques. Oh well.
"Plus I hate black." *sigh* I'm glad there's people like you out there, because you just make my draft decks better.
Anyhow, here are the picks I would have made thru the first booster (TSP) and first pick of booster 2 (PLC), since what I would be passed would obviously be different:
Sudden Death (In general, I would take Lava Axe, Soot, Sudden Death, and possibly Tendrils over an Embrance.)
Faceless Butcher (Sudden Shock is tempting, but since they are both solid removal and one is already in my color, I'll give the nod to the Butcher) [note: passed good W B R]
Dark Withering [note: passed good B R G]
Castle Raptors (I'm no big fan of white, but getting such a good card so late is a great signal) [note: good W B R]
Amrou Seekers (finally a pick we agree on) [W U R...but it would be nice to see the rest of the cards from this pack]
Tresspasser il-Vec [U B]
Flickering Spirit [WB]
Feebleness [B]
Mana Skimmer [UBR]
AEther Web [UG]
Vampiric Sliver [B]
Skulking Knight [BR]
...
Saltblast
You basically seem to have been blinded by the sexiness of Embrance and totally ignored the fact that, aside from pack 3, you had no signals that Green would ever be open. Notice how the green cards quickly dried up in the third booster (FUT) because the same guy taking all the good green in TSP was still taking all the good green in FUT.
I'll conceed that you didn't see as much good black in FUT as I would have expected (only 1 Rattle), so I would guess someone who wasn't set in black in TSP opened a Damnation or somesuch in PLC, and since you let the PLC black pass you by, he gobbled them up and switched to black.
P28 Marauders still around with 2 cards left? that is amazing.
P18 def the charm or green critters
Over all the choices you had wasn't really all that great. I don't see anyway to have made a better deck out of same selection than what you did other than going red as one of color. But the deck is really not bad. Don't be so hard on yourself, you won the first game so couldn't be COMPLETELY wrong :)
Personally though 3rd pack I would go part red since browbeat wasn't picked after 3rd pick
Also I enjoyed your article as usual, keep up the good work
P18 Hate drafting here is so bad I can't put it into words. All three of the green cards were better picks.
P32 Empath
P34 The 3/3 is much better. In 8-4s you rarely see them past pick 4 or 5, you see Feilds sometimes as late as 12th.
P35 You really thought about Deepcavern Imp? Is isn't that good in black decks and worse in a non black deck with no madness cards. A 2/2 hasted flyer with built in card disadvantage won't win you games in this format.
P39 Sliversmith, decent SB card if you face a Sliver deck. You have nothing to abuse Escape with.
Last comment, overall I'd say you highly overvalue slivers. Having 2-5 slivers in your deck is pretty sub-par most of the time.
I am planning on writing some PDC articles, but I won't focus much on the tournament scene. I am looking more at a casual stance, since I don't know much about the PDC tournament scene. Go easy on me Alex, I know your critical on the PDC subject :)
I do not think classic will die, per-se, but will be reduced to the stagnant form it once was... that's all... I don't think it'll go away entirely.
I probably came across the wrong way, as people seem to think that's what I was saying, but maybe I just typed something different than I was trying to say. That's not how I interpret what I said. :(
Anyway, Thanks Danger, your input is important on this topic :)
If I did this as you suggested, then there wouldn't be ANYTHING under the "facts" category... as then they could change the set size by +10 cards to incorporate this, instead of changing out some cards... or other things could have changed.
Regardless of whether or not duals are in MED, classic will be just fine. Even the small number of playable cards - of which I'd say somewhere close to 25-40% of the previewed cards are worthy - will have an impact on classic. That's an insanely high ratio. DOesn't mean the whole set will be like that, but the set will bring many more cards into the play pool. THis is a good thing. Right now, classic would just be extended+ if it wasn't for flash.
It's a little like King Longshanks in Braveheart ideology. Just breed the cards out of the format through sheer numbers. :)
I have to say, though, Saprolings are anything but gone from the Standard PDC metagame. You're right, people did get sick of playing them -- except a few. A Saprolings deck piloted by hokusai22 came in 2nd place at the most recent Thursday night Standard PDC event. Saprolings would be registering even more wins if not for the recent dominance of Mr Slippery 39, piloting a Blue Beats deck to 3 consecutive Standard PDC victories.
Typically speaking, GU hasn't fared well in the current Pauper Standard metagame, but perhaps the influence of Xth Edition has turned over a new leaf for the color pair!
Looking forward to seeing you at UPDC or SPDC, Spike!
I do not think Classic is slowly dying, but rather, CURRENTLY, sitting in a stagnant pool of it's own filth... I agree, it really has almost nowhere to go, but up. However, this set can either 1) Advance the format as a whole, or 2) Decay the format UNTIL such time as the 2008 rotation or ME2.
I was hoping to wait a while before doing a topographical article on the effects of 2008 or ME2. As of NOW, though, is what I'm trying to focus on.
Thanks for the constructive input, so far, you two.
Yes but you put the fact that rares will not be in the set under "facts". I would recomend having a seperate heading title "speculation" listing the cards from the promo tab (we expect all will be in there) and that duals are not in it (with link to Worth's post.)
Fox News has a slogan "We report, you decide." Clearly a flase statement because if you report something as fact you shape someone's views on the subject.
Your basic premise seems to be that Classic is slowly dying. I don't see where this is coming from. WotC just restarted weekly Classic PEs and unlike some other formats all have fired. The two 3x events along with the IPA qualifier drew large crowds.
While the Classic scene isn't exactly "thriving" at this point it has no where to go but up. One thing you didn't mention is the extended rotation in fall, 2008. This will move one core set and three blocks out of Extended. This will clearly make Classic much more popular with the casual crowd but I expect a fair number of Extended players will ether still want to use expensive cards they own (rather then selling them at the much reducded prices they will see post-rotation) or just some old favorites.
The ratity of Force of Will is a real issue that I am worried about adding $100+ to the format's entry barrier. However I don't think Classic will die if Force of Will is rare. Worth has already said ME2 is in the works and Wizards has plans to release Weatherlight and 3 more pre-Invasion blocks online. Wizards has inintrest in supporting Classic simply to sell cards from these forthcoming blocks.
While Worth never said, for CERTAIN, the duals wouldn't be in the set. The current, most common, belief is that they are not.
I was not saying that, for sure, they wouldn't be in; but, that they were not believed to be in the set.
Also, as I mentioned in the start of this article (which is why I put links to all my information and sources), the concept is to formulate your OWN opinion(s) of the set as we know at the moment.
Actually, Worth never specifically said there won't be any duals in the set. To tell you the truth, I think that they will end up in the set, whether we see them in the beta or they plug them in as a surpise. Worth wanted to do the same for FoW, but was told that it actually needed extensive testing, so he decided against it. The duals, on the other hand, don't need more testing than what the QA people do.
I wish I could open money rares, that would be neat.
I think that the best advice I could offer to new drafters, at a basic level is take removal at a premium, and follow that up with creatures that have evasion.
That's pretty much basic drafting.
Jeff Cunningham wrote some excellant articles over at the mothership, magicthegathering.com in his magic academy series that dealt with advanced drafting like signals and such, I feel uncomfortable offering advice there, because well, as we can see I still need to learn a lot on that way.
First of all I want to apologize for being a little late with responding to the forum posts here. I've been really busy, school started on the 13th, and I learned that I am having surgery on the 22nd, so I've been trying really hard to play catch up for stuff that has not even happened in school yet.
Anyway, I'll hit some general points real quick.
I'm getting to teh 8-4s I promise. One of my weak points, and something that I think has been keeping me from getting back on to the pro tour is I have not learned enough. I want to learn as much as I can now before I get to the less unforgiving 8-4 room.
I took the Drake over the thallid producer because I often times feel that I need to take fliers higher than synergy.
Here's my first 8 picks because it's really hard to tell what would have happened with your draft it you'd made my picks.
Pick 1: Fledgling Mawcor by a mile. Lots of things can kill or hold off a 3/3 flier. Those same things will kill a 2/2 flier obv, but with Mawcor you can remove small creatures, ping your opp to death on a stalled board, and you can also splash it.
Pick 2: Sporesower obv. Best card in the pack, and we're only pick 2 so color doesn't matter.
Pick 3: Hard pick. I would probably go to time bewteen the Ephemeron and the Blast. IMO both are more powerful than the Hermit, even though he has synergy with the Sporesower. Thing is, Hermit gives that +1/+1 your your saps even if the opponent plays him. I would probably grab the Ephemeron here at the wire, blue is obv open, and maybe your table was just so horribly bad that no one realizes that Blast is awesome and it'll table lol. I also like U/G better than R/G, but that doesn't really matter.
Pick 4: Hunting Moa is ass. Snag the Deathspore Thallid, as it is absolutely insane game winning combo if you can get a Sprout Swarm in FS and a few more Thallids (which you will).
Pick 5: Lens. Poof, there's your best fixer for handling the double G of the Sporesower as well as helping to splash for the Deathspore.
Pick 6: I'm not a HUGE fan of the Shell-Dweller, but in this deck that already looks to be shaping up, you'll either hold the ground and kill with fliers or kill with Thallids. He does both, and is a good pick for once instead of being the 23rd man in.
Pick 7: Toss up between Germinator and Snapback. It appears at this point that your neighbors are drafting orange and purple, because there should not be cards like this this late. I'd probably just snag the Germinator for over the top OMG SAPS DEATH.
Pick 8: Think Twice rounds out the first 8 with some nice card drawing to assemble your Thallid army of death.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DO YOUR NEXT DRAFT IN AN 8-4.
Not to nitpick, but it would be C:Program FilesMTGO League Exporter. Without those slashes it wouldn't work. My 2 cents from working on computers all these years...
you of course realize the effects this set will also have on rainbow stairwell!!!!!!! that is what i am excited about.. (flexes his RS might.) err uhm.. :) well thanks hk for the article it filled me in on the new classic expansion. something which i really have not been paying attention to. !!! see you online and keep that RS deck handy.
not good black in future sight? first pick ichor slick over the ghostfire- 2 deepcavern imps- death rattle- STRONGHOLD RATS-- and mass of ghouls is not that bad.
Sorry 'bout the double post, got an error message both times. =P
I hope I'm not starting to get a reputation for giving harsh critiques. Oh well.
"Plus I hate black." *sigh* I'm glad there's people like you out there, because you just make my draft decks better.
Anyhow, here are the picks I would have made thru the first booster (TSP) and first pick of booster 2 (PLC), since what I would be passed would obviously be different:
Sudden Death (In general, I would take Lava Axe, Soot, Sudden Death, and possibly Tendrils over an Embrance.)
Faceless Butcher (Sudden Shock is tempting, but since they are both solid removal and one is already in my color, I'll give the nod to the Butcher) [note: passed good W B R]
Dark Withering [note: passed good B R G]
Castle Raptors (I'm no big fan of white, but getting such a good card so late is a great signal) [note: good W B R]
Amrou Seekers (finally a pick we agree on) [W U R...but it would be nice to see the rest of the cards from this pack]
Tresspasser il-Vec [U B]
Flickering Spirit [WB]
Feebleness [B]
Mana Skimmer [UBR]
AEther Web [UG]
Vampiric Sliver [B]
Skulking Knight [BR]
...
Saltblast
You basically seem to have been blinded by the sexiness of Embrance and totally ignored the fact that, aside from pack 3, you had no signals that Green would ever be open. Notice how the green cards quickly dried up in the third booster (FUT) because the same guy taking all the good green in TSP was still taking all the good green in FUT.
I'll conceed that you didn't see as much good black in FUT as I would have expected (only 1 Rattle), so I would guess someone who wasn't set in black in TSP opened a Damnation or somesuch in PLC, and since you let the PLC black pass you by, he gobbled them up and switched to black.
P28 Marauders still around with 2 cards left? that is amazing.
P18 def the charm or green critters
Over all the choices you had wasn't really all that great. I don't see anyway to have made a better deck out of same selection than what you did other than going red as one of color. But the deck is really not bad. Don't be so hard on yourself, you won the first game so couldn't be COMPLETELY wrong :)
Personally though 3rd pack I would go part red since browbeat wasn't picked after 3rd pick
Also I enjoyed your article as usual, keep up the good work
P18 Hate drafting here is so bad I can't put it into words. All three of the green cards were better picks.
P32 Empath
P34 The 3/3 is much better. In 8-4s you rarely see them past pick 4 or 5, you see Feilds sometimes as late as 12th.
P35 You really thought about Deepcavern Imp? Is isn't that good in black decks and worse in a non black deck with no madness cards. A 2/2 hasted flyer with built in card disadvantage won't win you games in this format.
P39 Sliversmith, decent SB card if you face a Sliver deck. You have nothing to abuse Escape with.
Last comment, overall I'd say you highly overvalue slivers. Having 2-5 slivers in your deck is pretty sub-par most of the time.
I am planning on writing some PDC articles, but I won't focus much on the tournament scene. I am looking more at a casual stance, since I don't know much about the PDC tournament scene. Go easy on me Alex, I know your critical on the PDC subject :)
Allow me to comment on this:
I do not think classic will die, per-se, but will be reduced to the stagnant form it once was... that's all... I don't think it'll go away entirely.
I probably came across the wrong way, as people seem to think that's what I was saying, but maybe I just typed something different than I was trying to say. That's not how I interpret what I said. :(
Anyway, Thanks Danger, your input is important on this topic :)
If I did this as you suggested, then there wouldn't be ANYTHING under the "facts" category... as then they could change the set size by +10 cards to incorporate this, instead of changing out some cards... or other things could have changed.
As current, it's FACT, so it belongs there. :)
Regardless of whether or not duals are in MED, classic will be just fine. Even the small number of playable cards - of which I'd say somewhere close to 25-40% of the previewed cards are worthy - will have an impact on classic. That's an insanely high ratio. DOesn't mean the whole set will be like that, but the set will bring many more cards into the play pool. THis is a good thing. Right now, classic would just be extended+ if it wasn't for flash.
It's a little like King Longshanks in Braveheart ideology. Just breed the cards out of the format through sheer numbers. :)
Thanks for the article, Spike!
I have to say, though, Saprolings are anything but gone from the Standard PDC metagame. You're right, people did get sick of playing them -- except a few. A Saprolings deck piloted by hokusai22 came in 2nd place at the most recent Thursday night Standard PDC event. Saprolings would be registering even more wins if not for the recent dominance of Mr Slippery 39, piloting a Blue Beats deck to 3 consecutive Standard PDC victories.
Typically speaking, GU hasn't fared well in the current Pauper Standard metagame, but perhaps the influence of Xth Edition has turned over a new leaf for the color pair!
Looking forward to seeing you at UPDC or SPDC, Spike!
This is the type of discussion I hoped to spark.
I do not think Classic is slowly dying, but rather, CURRENTLY, sitting in a stagnant pool of it's own filth... I agree, it really has almost nowhere to go, but up. However, this set can either 1) Advance the format as a whole, or 2) Decay the format UNTIL such time as the 2008 rotation or ME2.
I was hoping to wait a while before doing a topographical article on the effects of 2008 or ME2. As of NOW, though, is what I'm trying to focus on.
Thanks for the constructive input, so far, you two.
Yes but you put the fact that rares will not be in the set under "facts". I would recomend having a seperate heading title "speculation" listing the cards from the promo tab (we expect all will be in there) and that duals are not in it (with link to Worth's post.)
Fox News has a slogan "We report, you decide." Clearly a flase statement because if you report something as fact you shape someone's views on the subject.
Your basic premise seems to be that Classic is slowly dying. I don't see where this is coming from. WotC just restarted weekly Classic PEs and unlike some other formats all have fired. The two 3x events along with the IPA qualifier drew large crowds.
While the Classic scene isn't exactly "thriving" at this point it has no where to go but up. One thing you didn't mention is the extended rotation in fall, 2008. This will move one core set and three blocks out of Extended. This will clearly make Classic much more popular with the casual crowd but I expect a fair number of Extended players will ether still want to use expensive cards they own (rather then selling them at the much reducded prices they will see post-rotation) or just some old favorites.
The ratity of Force of Will is a real issue that I am worried about adding $100+ to the format's entry barrier. However I don't think Classic will die if Force of Will is rare. Worth has already said ME2 is in the works and Wizards has plans to release Weatherlight and 3 more pre-Invasion blocks online. Wizards has inintrest in supporting Classic simply to sell cards from these forthcoming blocks.
While Worth never said, for CERTAIN, the duals wouldn't be in the set. The current, most common, belief is that they are not.
I was not saying that, for sure, they wouldn't be in; but, that they were not believed to be in the set.
Also, as I mentioned in the start of this article (which is why I put links to all my information and sources), the concept is to formulate your OWN opinion(s) of the set as we know at the moment.
I use hamtastic's exporter all the time. A great little tool. Posting a sealed pool online without it is just silly!
Actually, Worth never specifically said there won't be any duals in the set. To tell you the truth, I think that they will end up in the set, whether we see them in the beta or they plug them in as a surpise. Worth wanted to do the same for FoW, but was told that it actually needed extensive testing, so he decided against it. The duals, on the other hand, don't need more testing than what the QA people do.
Yes, this will be tossing up some new ones into RS, I look forward to playing RS again, if I can ever see any of you online! :P
Anyway, I will be putting that info up as well as prismatic, in addition to Classic in general!
Let's do what we can!
I wish I could open money rares, that would be neat.
I think that the best advice I could offer to new drafters, at a basic level is take removal at a premium, and follow that up with creatures that have evasion.
That's pretty much basic drafting.
Jeff Cunningham wrote some excellant articles over at the mothership, magicthegathering.com in his magic academy series that dealt with advanced drafting like signals and such, I feel uncomfortable offering advice there, because well, as we can see I still need to learn a lot on that way.
First of all I want to apologize for being a little late with responding to the forum posts here. I've been really busy, school started on the 13th, and I learned that I am having surgery on the 22nd, so I've been trying really hard to play catch up for stuff that has not even happened in school yet.
Anyway, I'll hit some general points real quick.
I'm getting to teh 8-4s I promise. One of my weak points, and something that I think has been keeping me from getting back on to the pro tour is I have not learned enough. I want to learn as much as I can now before I get to the less unforgiving 8-4 room.
I took the Drake over the thallid producer because I often times feel that I need to take fliers higher than synergy.
Thanks for the well-done article!
The deck is interesting and performing wery well and now I'm the lucky one seeing the new build in action, yupee ;).
Here's my first 8 picks because it's really hard to tell what would have happened with your draft it you'd made my picks.
Pick 1: Fledgling Mawcor by a mile. Lots of things can kill or hold off a 3/3 flier. Those same things will kill a 2/2 flier obv, but with Mawcor you can remove small creatures, ping your opp to death on a stalled board, and you can also splash it.
Pick 2: Sporesower obv. Best card in the pack, and we're only pick 2 so color doesn't matter.
Pick 3: Hard pick. I would probably go to time bewteen the Ephemeron and the Blast. IMO both are more powerful than the Hermit, even though he has synergy with the Sporesower. Thing is, Hermit gives that +1/+1 your your saps even if the opponent plays him. I would probably grab the Ephemeron here at the wire, blue is obv open, and maybe your table was just so horribly bad that no one realizes that Blast is awesome and it'll table lol. I also like U/G better than R/G, but that doesn't really matter.
Pick 4: Hunting Moa is ass. Snag the Deathspore Thallid, as it is absolutely insane game winning combo if you can get a Sprout Swarm in FS and a few more Thallids (which you will).
Pick 5: Lens. Poof, there's your best fixer for handling the double G of the Sporesower as well as helping to splash for the Deathspore.
Pick 6: I'm not a HUGE fan of the Shell-Dweller, but in this deck that already looks to be shaping up, you'll either hold the ground and kill with fliers or kill with Thallids. He does both, and is a good pick for once instead of being the 23rd man in.
Pick 7: Toss up between Germinator and Snapback. It appears at this point that your neighbors are drafting orange and purple, because there should not be cards like this this late. I'd probably just snag the Germinator for over the top OMG SAPS DEATH.
Pick 8: Think Twice rounds out the first 8 with some nice card drawing to assemble your Thallid army of death.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DO YOUR NEXT DRAFT IN AN 8-4.
THE CARDS LEFT IN THESE PACKS MAKE MY EYES BLEED.
ESP PACK 3 OMGWTFBBQ
I appear to be suffering from: Everyone must know what I already know-itis. Sorry about that. I'll add in a description in the opening paragraph.
Thanks!
-Erik
I did indeed have them in in my version, it appears that the content editor pulled them out. I'll see if I can sneak them back in.
-Erik
Not to nitpick, but it would be C:Program FilesMTGO League Exporter. Without those slashes it wouldn't work. My 2 cents from working on computers all these years...
you of course realize the effects this set will also have on rainbow stairwell!!!!!!! that is what i am excited about.. (flexes his RS might.) err uhm.. :) well thanks hk for the article it filled me in on the new classic expansion. something which i really have not been paying attention to. !!!
see you online and keep that RS deck handy.